One of the best things I've done.So taking tens of courses and practicing at home

What sort (duration) courses did you take? kind regards

Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

You can never have too many tools in your tool box. As long as you are clear about what you are doing at any one time and what it is supposed to achieve, rather than drifting from technique to technique or muddling it up.

This is not so much true if you are doing jhana practice as then you need to dig one deep hole not several shallow ones.

“Peace is within oneself to be found in the same place as agitation and suffering. It is not found in a forest or on a hilltop, nor is it given by a teacher. Where you experience suffering, you can also find freedom from suffering. Trying to run away from suffering is actually to run toward it.” ― Ajahn Chah

Goofaholix wrote:You can never have too many tools in your tool box. As long as you are clear about what you are doing at any one time and what it is supposed to achieve, rather than drifting from technique to technique or muddling it up.

This is not so much true if you are doing jhana practice as then you need to dig one deep hole not several shallow ones.

When you practice through the entire waking day for a few days you eventually discover it is all the same hole and that any consistently applicable insight is a consistently useful insight as long as it continues to take you deeper.

I am not sure anyone can hold any one-sided-only view applicable to everyone. Everyone is different and will have a different experience. Some techniques may be more adapted to some individuals, and less to others. I don't think there is any general rule.

As to the time it takes before getting to stream entry, some people have their five hindrances strong, so it will take time at first to weaken them. Some people have them weak already. Goenka told the story of his friend who became sotapanna on the third day of his first course (under Sayagyi U Ba Khin), even before vipassana was taught.

And to quote the Buddha himself on this matter (translation by Bikkhu Bodhi):

So it is clearly shown here that there is difference in people's progress according to inner dispositions